“‘Sirs, I beg you, of what am I accused? I belong to no revolutionary party.’ For at that time, I-wan, I did not. It was only afterwards that I truly was a communist. — ‘I work hard every day and I do not leave the school grounds. I have only one ambition. It is to graduate with honors, to get a good job, and to pay back debts. When that is done, I wish to establish a school in my home village. The people are very poor. The winds are dry and the crops are scanty. The earth gives barely enough food against starvation, and not always enough, so that sometimes we have famine. And the taxes are very high — military taxes, taxes on opium — all taxes. For though we can sell all our opium quite easily to the government, the government taxes us first and so heavily that it pays us only a little better to grow opium instead of grain. All these difficulties keep my people poor, so there is no money for schools. But I have always been for learning. From my childhood I have wanted to learn all that there is to know. So my people saved and pinched and gathered enough to send me to this beautiful city to school. Here I have been happy. Sirs, where is my fault?’
“I practiced saying all this and much more, as I imagined myself standing before the judges — grave, kind, intelligent men who would soon see they had made a mistake. Then I would be set free. When I went home next summer it would be a thing to tell, how I was arrested by mistake — I would tell them what a fine prison this was, how comfortable the quilt was, and how twice a day I had quite good food. Nobody ate more than twice a day in my village, and in winter when work was slack, perhaps only once a day. Then, the winter days being short, we all slept a good deal. I tried to sleep in the cell, but though it was quiet and comfortable, I could not sleep, expecting at any moment to be summoned for trial. I kept hot on the end of my tongue what I would say.
“But I was not summoned. Day followed day, and the only face I saw was that of the guard who brought me my food. To this man I cried out at last, ‘Are they not going to give me a trial?’
“‘I don’t know about such things,’ the guard replied. ‘Here is your rice.’ And he went away.
“I grew mad at last with impatience. I began to beg the guard. ‘Please find out about my trial! I beg you — I beg you!’
“But the guard only shook his head. ‘I am forbidden to speak to the prisoners,’ he said, and went away.
“I always carried in my belt my little store of money for the term. This I still had, because when I came, although it was the rule in this prison to make the new prisoners bathe and change their clothes before going to their cells, they had let me pass, saying that the bathroom keeper had gone out that day to drink wine at his brother’s wedding feast, and so I was put straight into the cell, locked up and forgotten, and I still had my money. One day I took out my money, divided it in half, and putting one half in my hand, I said to the guard, holding it out, ‘Please inquire when I am to be tried. Here is a little small silver.’
“The guard opened his eyes very wide at this, but he took the silver, without reply. The next day he said abruptly, ‘There is to be no trial. You are a political prisoner and your crime is proved.’
“‘But I do not even know what it is!’ I cried.
“‘That I did not ask,’ the guard said.
“I tore off my belt and poured all I had into the guard’s hand.
“‘Find out what my crime is,’ I begged. ‘This is all I have.’
“When the guard went away I sat on the bed, my body tense and sweating. I should not have told the guard I had no more. Perhaps he would keep the money and do nothing, knowing there was no more to expect.
“But the guard had a good enough heart. He said to me next day, ‘I asked a guard whose brother is a scribe in the court and has to do with records, and he says you wrote something in a foreign paper where foreigners could read it that our country was poor and full of famine, and that the government taxes the people too heavily, and that they buy the opium which the farmers raise. And so the foreigners read it and laughed at us and despised us. This is your crime.’
“‘But — it is not what I said!’ I cried in horror.
“‘The record is so,’ replied the guard, and went away.
“I could not sleep at all that night. I sat up remembering every word of that composition. I had been very proud of it, and Miss Maitland had praised it greatly and had read it aloud to the class. She said, ‘This is so beautiful a piece that I wish English people could read it to see how young Chinese love their country. Liu En-lan, suppose you send it to the English newspaper for the prize competition.’
“I had felt the blood run all over my body under my skin, until I was warm with pleasure, and I had spent my spare hours for weeks copying the composition with all the corrections. Then I had sent it with a letter to the editor of the English paper. It was given the prize and the editor printed it with a note, saying, ‘It is not often that we receive so honest and thoughtful an analysis of a country as this young Chinese patriot has sent us.’ When I saw these words I was joyful with pride.”
I-wan paused in his reading. Yes, he remembered that essay. From his school also that year they had all written essays for the competition, and Liu En-lan — that had indeed been the name of the one who wrote the best. But nobody had ever heard of him and it was soon forgotten. He himself had not thought of it until this moment.
He began to read again.
“For this I was now in prison. Day followed day in an endless chain of morning and night which were different only in dark and light. I lost count of the days and the nights, so that I did not know how long I had been in prison. I had no friends and no one came to visit me. Miss Maitland tried, but she was told they had sent me home, and she believed then I was safe. She told me afterwards. And there was not even any reason to speak to the guard any more, since all my money was gone.
“I sat, therefore, hour after hour, or I stood, my face against the bars, staring at the bit of sky, and thinking over and over of what I had said in my composition…. I had written it one day in spring, a beautiful day when the winds were warm and flowers were for sale in the markets. The streets were gay and motor cars were flying back and forth, the rickshas swerving out of their way. Time and again I had stopped to watch the quick beauty of a motor car, speeding along the wide street. In the afternoon after school I had walked outside the city and I had stood looking over the miles of green country, my heart full of a strange great feeling I did not understand. It was like the ache of love — not love for a girl, for I knew no girls, but love for my country spread before me, spread so far to the north where my home was, spread here in this new modern city, spread further still to the southern seas I had never seen. And as I stood this great love began to distil itself into words. I wanted to put down all that I felt about my country. The words began to shape like drops of shining water from a glorious mist. I hurried back to my small room and began to write, word by word, what had been my vision.
“It was not easy to do this. I remember I was sweating with the effort to write exactly what I felt and saw. Night came but I did not eat. I lit a candle and wrote on by its small light. All over the city there were bright electric lights and neon signs springing out of the darkness, though I was too poor to rent a room in a house with electric lights. But this made no difference to me. I was proud that there were such lights. If I had not been working I would have been out on the streets, staring at them as I never tired of doing.
“I put the electric lights into my composition, I put the whole city, the strong new city growing out of the sea. I put in motor cars and motor trucks carrying the heavy loads that human beings had once carried. I put in the schools, the fine markets, the luscious imported fruits, the flowers from greenhouses. I smiled and put in the beauty shops where women curled their hair. I put in the fine new buildings, finer than any palaces of emperors. I put in the miles of country, the fields, the skies I had seen that afternoon, and I laid down my pen.